Woman falls from Yangon apartment under questionable circumstances during military raid

One woman is believed to have died in a mysterious fall from her sixth floor apartment after the regime’s armed forces raided her building in Yangon Region’s Mingalar Taung Nyunt Township on Sunday. 

As troops stormed the sixth floor of building No. 100 on 91st Street, residents of the area said they heard five gunshots. Seconds later, they reported hearing something hit the ground-floor awning. A woman known to live in the sixth floor apartment was then seen laying on the street, with blood pooled around her head. 

“We did not dare to look directly at the place [where the soldiers were shooting], as they were aiming at us [in other buildings],” a man who lives in the same ward told Myanmar Now. “After we heard gunshots, we heard shouting. We heard something drop onto the awning. We saw a woman fall, she was facedown on the street. The awning was broken, too.”

Soldiers and police called an ambulance and took her away, the man added. 

According to the Facebook page Mro Ethnic in Myanmar, the victim is a 34-year-old ethnic Chin woman named Lianzuali, and a native of Kale, Sagaing Region. 

While netizens have speculated about the circumstances around her fall, Myanmar Now could not confirm whether the woman was shot, pushed off the emergency exit stairs, accidentally fell, or had deliberately jumped to her death. 

The woman shared the sixth floor apartment with two friends, who residents said were arrested by the armed forces during the raid on Sunday. 

Just before the military and police entered building No. 100, they also raided a ground floor room in building No. 102 next door, according to locals. 

The room was being used by the We Love Yangon social services association as an unmarked storeroom for donations of funds, supplies, and medical equipment in support of government employees participating in the Civil Disobedience Movement.  

“That room of the social services team didn’t even have a sign. Only a few people on the street knew about it. But in the morning, they raided that room,” a man who also lives on 91st Street told Myanmar Now, adding that there was no one from the We Love Yangon team at the store room at the time the armed forces came. 

He said the soldiers and police took all the supplies being kept there, and destroyed other property inside.